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Irving Stone, Author of 'Lust for Life,' Dies at 86

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Irving Stone, a prolific author whose exhaustively researched and often immense biographical novels included ''Lust for Life,'' based on the story of van Gogh, died of heart failure on Saturday night at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in Los Angeles. He was 86 years old and lived in Beverly Hills, Calif.

Mr. Stone also wrote ''The Agony and the Ecstasy,'' based on the life of Michelangelo, and biographical novels centering on the lives of Andrew and Rachel Jackson, Mary Todd Lincoln, Eugene V. Debs and the Impressionist painter Camille Pissarro.

He was sometimes credited with inventing the biographical novel in its contemporary form; he was indisputably the most successful master of the genre.

''His books on historic figures,'' said the historian Allan Nevins, ''have given a lively impression of the past to hundreds of thousands of readers who could have been reached by no method less vivid and vigorous than his.'' More Than 2 Dozen Books

Although biographical novels were his specialty, Mr. Stone also produced two biographies, ''Clarence Darrow for the Defense'' in 1941, and ''Earl Warren'' in 1948. ''They Also Ran,'' a lively study of unsuccessful Presidential candidates, was published in 1943. There were more than two dozen Stone books, including two nonbiographical novels, and he wrote a number of unsuccessful plays.

Born in San Francisco on July 14, 1903, Mr. Stone, whose name was Irving Tennenbaum, was the son of Charles Tennenbaum and the former Pauline Rosenberg. When he was 7 years old his parents were divorced and his mother put the boy in the care of his grandmother so she could work as a buyer for a department store. His mother later married a fellow buyer, and after Irving joined them in their new home he took his stepfather's name.

The young Irving Stone was bookish and often tried his hand at short-story writing. He said many years later that he was deeply influenced by Jack London, who eventually was the subject of Mr. Stone's biographical novel ''Sailor on Horseback.'' Played Saxophone in College

In 1920 he entered the University of California at Berkeley in accordance with the wishes of his mother, who wanted him to study medicine, but he settled on political science as a major. While at Berkeley he supported himself playing saxophone in a dance band.

After receiving his bachelor's degree in 1923, Mr. Stone accepted a teaching fellowship at the University of Southern California, where he took a master's degree in economics. On another teaching fellowship he studied for a doctorate at Berkeley, but he left the university in May 1926 without writing his doctoral thesis. The following month Mr. Stone left for France, intent on a writing career.

As a budding playwright, Mr. Stone was prolific but not successful. In a single year he churned out 17 plays, none of which was sold. But it was during this period that he discovered, by chance, an exhibition at the Rosenberg Galleries in Paris of the blazing canvases of van Gogh. Passion for One Artist's Work

''It was the single most compelling emotional experience of my life,'' he said. ''I knew that I had to find out more about van Gogh. Even though I was far too young, and felt I did not have sufficient technique to write a book about Vincent van Gogh, I knew I had to try. If I didn't I would never write anything else.''

Back in New York, Mr. Stone wrote mysteries for pulp magazines and saved enough money to return to Europe and begin his work on van Gogh. He spent six months tracing the artist's progress and career in England, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. In 1931 the unwieldy manuscript was finished, but ''Lust for Life'' was rejected by 17 publishers over the next three years.

Meanwhile, in 1933, Mr. Stone succeeded in having published ''Pageant of Youth,'' which he described as ''a very bad novel indeed'' about life on a California campus. He also met and courted Jean Factor, a young editor who studied ''Lust for Life'' and suggested how it might be cut to readable size. When Longmans, Green & Company published the book in 1934 it was hailed as a fine biographical novel and became an immediate best seller. Assistance of His Wife

Mr. Stone and Miss Factor were married and financed their honeymoon on the $250 advance he had got on the book. She was to serve as co-researcher and editor of all his books. They had two children, Paula and Kenneth, and lived in Beverly Hills, except for frequent long stays in places where the subjects of Mr. Stone's books had lived and worked.

In choosing historical subjects to write about, what aroused Mr. Stone's curiosity was the suspicion that a character had been misunderstood or unfairly misrepresented by previous studies. He was also intrigued by how the women in the lives of men in the public eye influenced them.

For example, he became convinced that Jessie Benton Fremont was not only exciting but also an intelligent woman living in a time of extraordinary change. She had married a brilliant man, John C. Fremont, a colorful 19th-century explorer, politician and soldier. Mr. Stone chose to place the focus of his story on the woman in Fremont's life, and ''The Immortal Wife'' (1944) became one of his most popular books. The Fabric of Relationships

Mr. Stone again examined the effect of marriage on an important historical figure in ''Adversary in the House,'' a 1947 novel about Eugene V. Debs, the American radical, and in ''The President's Lady'' (1951), a romantic account of Andrew and Rachel Jackson.

Mr. Stone also wrote a novel about the relationship of Abraham and Mary Todd Lincoln, ''Love is Eternal,'' in 1954. He sought to dispel the prevailing notion that Mary Todd Lincoln was a vile-tempered, jealous harridan who made Lincoln's life miserable at a time when he had the responsibilities of the Civil War on his shoulders.

For his study of Michelangelo, ''The Agony and the Ecstasy,'' published in 1961, the Stones spent more than two years in Italy doing research. The total research and writing time was more than four years. Making the 'Intuitive Leap'

''My books are based 98 percent on documentary evidence,'' Mr. Stone told an interviewer. ''I spend several years trying to get inside the brain and heart of my subjects, listening to the interior monologues in their letters, and when I have to bridge the chasms between the factual evidence, I try to make an intuitive leap through the eyes and motivation of the person I'm writing about.''

Mr. Stone's novels included ''The Passionate Journey,'' a life of the American artist John Noble; ''The Origin,'' subtitled ''A Biographical Novel of Charles Darwin''; ''Dear Theo,'' an ''autobiography'' of van Gogh compiled from the artist's copious letters to his beloved brother; ''Men to Match My Mountains,'' a panoramic view of the opening of the Far West in the 19th century; ''Those Who Love,'' about Abigail Adams; ''Depths of Glory,'' the novel on the painter Pissarro, and ''The Passions of the Mind,'' based on the life of Sigmund Freud.

Surviving are his wife; his son, Kenneth, of Los Angeles; his daughter, Paula, of Santa Cruz, Calif., and a grandson.

A version of this obituary appears in print on August 28, 1989, on Page B00006 of the National edition with the headline: Irving Stone, Author of 'Lust for Life,' Dies at 86. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe